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No not that Steve. Over at TrustedReviews they recently published an article listing ten things they’d change about the iPad. A reasonable list of points, many of which Apple will probably address in due course. What interested me the most however was a comment by someone called Steve that went like this…

“You would have to be insane to buy any first-generation Apple product. The iPad’s inevitable successor will be lighter, thinner, more powerful etc etc etc.”

Has to start somewhere

Let’s think about this for a second. Steve is seriously suggesting that no-one buy any first-generation Apple product. Ok, how does that work? Every single device that Apple makes is initially a first-generation product, in fact pretty much every single piece of technology in the world starts out as a first-generation product. So, following through Steve’s advice – not one single person purchases an iPad when it’s first released. Likewise, every other new product they’ve ever launched remains unsold because people have heeded Steve’s wise words. Result? Apple, unable to sell anything it launched, packed up and went home. There is no MacBook. There is no iMac. There is no iPhone or iPad. There is nothing that is Apple, and certainly no second-generation products.

Are anyone else’s first-generation products any better or is it simply Apple who can’t get it right? Well I don’t think I’ve ever seen a piece of technology that didn’t have shortcomings in it’s early life and that couldn’t be improved upon in subsequent iterations, well except for those products that bombed so badly to start with – like the Sinclair C5 or the Amstrad Email Phone perhaps?

Just because a first-generation product may not be perfect out of the starting gate, doesn’t negate all the good things it does do. I have seen many many positive reviews of the iPad, particularly from open-minded writers who don’t feel the need to bash Apple because it’s fashionable.What’s more, it’s often the experiences and feedback of these ‘insane’ early adopters that drive improvements.